On The Ohio

Raise your hand if you live near a river. On second thought, I can't see nothing, so just yell really loud instead. Growing up, the Kentucky River was never more than a ten minute hike away, whether at home or at school. When I moved to Louisville all I managed to do was swap one river town for another.

Did have to switch rivers though, moved up to a bigger river and with a bigger river comes a bigger city. It ain't any cleaner though. Louisville owes its existence to the Ohio River, or rather the Falls of the Ohio, the only major obstacle to navigation on river. Once upon a time the Ohio was one of the main means of transportation, and Louisville grew out of servicing that, moving goods from one end of the falls to the other.

Louisville is far from the only city on the Ohio though, with Cincinnati, Ohio just up the river a little ways. In their youth, Cincinnati and Louisville were rivals but in 1855 there was a Bloody Monday in Louisville that kind of spoiled things. That particular pogrom targeted immigrants from shithole countries such as Germany and Ireland, who were coming here bringing their evil and bloody Catholicism with them.

That kind of ruined Louisville's reputation for a bit, and it was never quite able to keep up with Cincinnati after. These photos are a mix from both Louisville and Cincinnati, as well as their cross-river neighbors, Jeffersonville, Indiana and Newport, Kentucky. We recently visited Cincy and Newport and it was almost eerie how familiar they felt, although obviously different in particulars they had been shaped similar forces and histories.

The architecture, the landscape, even the cross-river hostility was there to remind us of home. Can we make tagging stuff with 'No Trespassing' go viral? This calls for a TicTac video! Now where's my .357?

Hell, even the waterfront parks were similar. Guess there's only so many times you can build stuff on the river's edge before you get tired of it flooding and just call it a park.

Did you know that if you mix a bunch of people with a lot of flowing water, you get bridges? It's science. If your senator is old enough to be a walking advertisement for term limits, then occasionally your bridges will reproduce asexually. Or is it federally? Either way, Louisville has grown a couple new bridges just in the past decade or two.

Now if only we can bring Art Deco back. . .